I listened to the final episode of the iHeartRadio national podcast Hell and Gone by investigator Catherine Townsend the other day. My reaction: Profound disappointment and solidly dashed expectations.
Townsend's speculative conclusions, along with those of Brad Garrett, the FBI consultant also used in ABC's poorly done 2008 special report on the death of Marshall's Olivia "Janie" Ward, were miles removed from the determinations I made 15 years ago after four years and more than 200 columns examining facts in the 16-year-old's death.
I was left cold by the podcast's summary of findings for valid reasons. Those included an overabundance of guesswork and chatty suppositions, rather than focusing on the relevant falsehoods and gross discrepancies that are known about how Janie died on Sept. 9, 1989, during a teen beer bust on Zack Ridge outside Marshall.
What I heard (instead of learning anything new) were surmisings set to music about the cause and manner of Janie's death by those who never met her father, the late Ron Ward, or who have a clue about the methods and unseen political connections within our state's criminal justice system.
Ron relentlessly accumulated tubs of records over the almost 30 years he invested toward fulfilling the promise made to his slain daughter over her lifeless body at a funeral home. Those files, photographs and papers all were made available to Townsend and the podcast team by Ron's trusting widow Mona and family.
In the concluding Hell and Gone episode, where eight weeks of programs about Janie's death were wrapped up in Townsend's and Garrett's best-guess scenarios, they spent an inordinate amount of irrelevant talk time speculating whether Janie might have killed herself by consuming orange segments soaked in pure-grain alcohol.
The poison-on-oranges theory seemed to prevail in this final segment, although Janie's initial autopsy and toxicology report by former state Medical Examiner Dr. Fahmy Malak determined her body's nearly negligible alcohol content was the equivalent of a single beer. Malak also said he found evidence that Janie had consumed tomatoes before dying. No mention of oranges.
Yet, still applying pure guesswork from afar, Townsend's report speculated that Malak might have become confused and thereby incapable of recognizing the difference between partially digested tomatoes and oranges.
It seemed to me the podcast's guesswork twisted its summation into a verbal pretzel by trying to make it seem entirely plausible that this one teenager, who seldom drank alcohol, had consumed enough PGA-soaked oranges at the party to fall down and die gasping for air in the front yard of the cabin.
That theory to me felt like trying to wedge a triangle into a round hole simply to try and raise doubts about how Janie actually died and who was responsible.
In the concluding segment, I also heard relatively little about respected forensic pathologist Dr. Harry Bonnell (from California and the Parents of Murdered Children organization) and his second pivotal autopsy (following the first of two exhumations), which determined Janie's manner of death had been homicide from a fatal neck injury caused by a blunt object. Malak also had initially determined Janie suffered a neck and spine injury. That's two medical examiners, including one with not one political connection to our state, reaching similar conclusions.
Our former state Crime Lab administration shamefully wouldn't even allow Bonnell to use its facility for Janie's second autopsy.
Also lightly brushed over in the final episode was the critically significant side-view X-ray sent to the Ward family by the former Crime Lab director. Months earlier, Ron and Mona Ward had sat in that director's office when he displayed Janie's frontal and side-view X-ray panels on a screen. "We saw what killed Janie right away," Ron told me in 2004. "There was a clear separation of her spinal vertebrae high in the neck. I said out loud and pointed to it, saying, 'Right there is what killed our daughter!' The separation in her neck was very obvious even to us as lay people."
The lab director promised to send copies of both X-rays to the Wards at their request. Months passed. Ron called back repeatedly. Still nothing. Finally, two films did arrive. Ron and Mona were were in disbelief by what the lab had sent. The frontal X-ray that did not reveal the spinal separation looked exactly like the one they initially had seen. It also contained the lab's official evidentiary brand imprinted into the image.
However, the second, tell-tale X-ray of the side view that clearly showed the separation had been blanked out from the jawline down and contained no official Crime Lab imprint. In other words, it was clearly "unofficial." I call it bogus.
When Ron called to complain, he was told: "Well, we sent you what was in the file." Now there's a dodged response if I've ever heard one. Why would such a crude, unofficial X-ray have been created, then sent to the Wards as supposedly official if there wasn't a reason behind doing so?
Other relevant facts I'd have included in the conclusion of my imaginary podcast series: Months after Janie's autopsy, Malak sent several color autopsy photographs he'd taken to the Wards, one of which clearly showed Janie's spinal cord, torn in two, nestled within the spinal column. He included a note specifically saying he wanted the family to have the pictures in the event her case ever wound up in a courtroom. Ron told me he called that photograph "a smoking gun." I apparently missed that reference in the podcast's closing episode.
Other facts I'd have amplified about Janie's death: A far more in-depth look at how and why she was wet with debris on her clothing, hair and body, including sand and gravel lodged inside her bra. Suppose all that somehow happened at a landlocked cabin from eating a deadly orange that wasn't even described in her stomach or toxicology reports at autopsy? Hogwash.
The fact that Ron was so adamant about how Janie's neck flopped about abnormally from side to side when he touched her body at the funeral home in Marshall is significant. "I could see without question something really bad had happened to Janie from the condition she was in," the former U.S. Marine told me.
The official version that Janie, a sturdy young woman, inexplicably tumbled off a 9-inch-high rock porch into the cabin's front yard and had lain there unable to move or breathe until she died was beyond ridiculous from the beginning.
The podcast actually theorized that one or more kids at the party supposedly tried to revive her by pouring beer on her face as she lay there, becoming cyanotic from what Ron, I, and many others, have medical reason to believe was a sudden blow that fractured her neck. And that beer might have caused the liquid in her lungs.
Why was the teen daughter of a prominent Marshall official quoted in articles (after Janie's lifeless body was finally returned to town), allegedly saying she wasn't worried because her father could get her out of this? Out of what? Eating too many oranges?
There also was no mention of the couple reportedly fishing along the river not too far from the cabin who were quoted in one report saying they watched kids interacting with a girl's body in the water, as if trying to weigh it down. Who knows? But last I checked, a river has sand and gravel, but not PGA-soaked oranges.
The podcast's concluding episode also referred to the Ward family's perseverance and Garrett's explanation of how overwrought and grieving families often refuse to accept reality and frequently concoct nonfactual scenarios to fit their preconceptions of how their loved one died. While I'm sure that opinion is true in many instances, I'm equally certain that's not remotely close to what occurred in Janie's brutal death.
Ron's meticulous, 30-year investigation led to stacks and stacks of factual information rather than any pie-in-the-sky scenarios fueled by grief. The Wards always have been a grounded family dedicated solely to discovering the facts behind their daughter's death.
I reminded Ron the last time we talked, about a year before he reunited with beloved daughter, of my admonition when I began looking into Janie's death back in 2004. I told him I could write a billion words, but they wouldn't matter if those responsible for holding the guilty accountable failed. Justice always demands objective accountability.
Today, I still feel the same way, not due to wishful thinking, but because it is true. Before almost anyone from outside Arkansas seeking to investigate a crime (regardless of qualifications) can come here uninvited by the authorities and investigate much of anything controversial, they need a thorough understanding of the culture and connections that exist here.
The nation's vaunted Vidocq Society and Dr. Bonnell learned that the hard way when both got our state's cold shoulder, even after the renowned crime-solving organization asked if it could help investigate Janie's cold-case death in 2006. Response: We don't need you troublemaking folks.
Ron and Janie as a father and daughter now watch together knowing full well how she left this world. That story will forever be ingrained in our state's history as a prime example of just how twisted, politically perverse and unjust life, integrity and injustice in this fallen world can be.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
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